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Southampton Quidditch Club needs your help!

Quidditch may just be a fictional wizarding game to many, but what you might not realise is that SUSU actually has its very own team!

Yes, you read that correctly! The Southampton Quidditch Club has been active in practising the competitive sport since January 2013 and now they are in need of your help.

The club has been put forward for the Mars Milk Play Fund which, each month, donates cash to sports clubs in need of additional funding. If the team come out on top, they will receive a £1000 prize, so if you want to help them out, click here to vote for them.

Now, you might be thinking, ‘but how do they play Quidditch? I’ve never seen a Southampton student fly?’ Well, it’s not quite the same as Potter’s snitch-puking game from the first J.K. Rowling novel, as it has since been adapted to suit us mere muggles, being described as a mix between rugby, handball and dodge-ball, with a bit of tag thrown in for good measure. It seems that it isn’t just Southampton that is getting into the spellbinding game either, as there are now over 300 Quidditch teams across the world.

The team are doing rather well for themselves too, finishing fourth out of 16 teams at the British Quidditch Cup in November 2013, and getting two of their members into the UK team to compete in a global competition in Canada this summer.

So what exactly will the club spend the money on if they win? Team Captain Simon Bidwell said: “Winning the Mars Milk Fund would allow us to secure the future of the club for the next few years. We will be able to renovate our equipment and make it safer for our greatly received ‘kidditch’ sessions we run with local schools. We will also be able to purchase more items for training such as tackle bags, and it would also help cover the costs of The Southern Cup, a tournament we are hosting in Southampton on the 8th and 9th of November.”

If you’re thinking of getting involved in Southampton Quidditch Club, training will re-commence in late September, with sessions held twice a week on Southampton Common near Cemetery Lake (13.30 on Wednesday and 13.00 on Sunday). The club will also have a stand at the Bunfight during Freshers’ Week where prospective members can sign up.